


The Accord

by beetle



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bankim Rao is trapped in a living Hell, under his aunt's greedy, insistent thumb. Enter a naked, bound, wanted pirate in a bit of a fix. If either of them are to escape their chains, an accord must be struck between them. And quickly.</p><p>Written for the prompt(s): Pirates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> See archive warnings.
> 
> Terms:
> 
> Anjaan: Stranger.

The stranger is pale and naked and has a bounty on his head. He’s also gagged and tied up—hands and feet, and on his stomach—on Durijesh’s pallet.  
  
He looks up as I slip into the room fully, his panicked, pale eyes widening in wary hope. I close the door quietly behind me and lean against it for a moment as a plan springs into my mind, fully formed, if not especially detailed or well thought out.  
  
The hard part will be getting this stranger’s acquiescence, but I’m suddenly quite certain that I _can_ , his own circumstances notwithstanding.  
  
So the question becomes not:  _Can I do this?_  But:  _Do I really_ mean _to do this?_  I  _must_  mean to . . . or else I’d not be here, but attending to my usual duties at  _Madam Abharana’s Exotic Lotus Palace._  I’d be running orders to the kitchen, or mopping floors or preparing a room for its next visitors, instead of contemplating something that’ll likely end with the gagged stranger beheaded and me sold to the highest bidder.  
  
As it is, Cook’ll be wondering where I am and what’s keeping me, and the messy rooms left unattended will be a mute testament to my absence.  
  
Taking a deep breath— _it’s too late to back out now, Bankim,_  I tell myself—I approach the bed. The man in it begins to struggle and try to speak through the gag—one of Durijesh’s fine scarves—and I pause, halfway to him.  
  
“Be quiet,” I say softly, but commandingly. I have the power here, for the moment, and he needs to understand that before any deal can be stuck between us.  
  
The man stops struggling and squints at me. Eyes the color of an afternoon sky before a rainstorm track me as I move toward him once more. He’s a large man, all lean, long muscle and pale, hairy skin. His features are strong but pleasing, in a foreign way, though they’re partially obscured by the shoulder-length dark hair hanging in his face. But not so obscured that I’d failed to instantly recognize his face.  
  
“Do you understand what I say?” I ask slowly, because one can never tell how much a foreigner understands of one’s mother tongue. But the stranger nods once, tossing his hair out of his face. Yes, his features are quite handsome. I know Durijesh had, before this turn of events, been pleased to have such an attractive customer. “Good. You’re in quite a bind. Literally.”  
  
A muffled huff is my response and those sky-before-a-storm eyes become a bitstormier. I smile and hold out my hands in placation. “A terrible bind, yes, but I’m willing to help you escape. Get you out of this place and back to your ship—you  _are_ , I assume, a sailor?”  
  
A wary nod.  
  
“I thought so. And all I ask in return,” I begin, only to see his eyes narrow. “All I ask is that you take me with you.”  
  
Another muffled huff and the stranger begins rocking side to side as if trying to roll over onto his back. The pallet creaks loudly and I sigh. “Do stop that. You’re only going to get us discovered.”  
  
The stranger makes a frustrated sound and glares at me. I sigh again and take the last few steps that put me within reach of the bed, and I sit next to him. “If I remove Durijesh’s scarf, will you promise not to scream or shout or speak loudly? We really  _will_  be discovered if you do.”  
  
Appearing to think it over, the stranger closes his eyes for a few moments, then nods again. He opens his eyes to gaze into mine in a way I take to mean that I have his word.  
  
It would have to do.  
  
“Kindly refrain from biting me,” I murmur as I reach out to tweak a bit of scarf and whip it out of his mouth. As soon as it’s out, the stranger clears his throat quietly and croaks: “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” I tuck the scarf into my pocket, just in case I need to reapply it within the next few minutes. “Now, as to my terms—“  
  
“No one can just bring a random whore onto the  _Vivianna_  without the captain’s approval,” he says in a more even tenor. His accent is strange—clipped and gutteral. I shiver and glance away from his dark-blue eyes till I’ve collected myself.  
  
“Then you must somehow secure the captain’s approval. Also I’m neither random nor a whore. I’m the person who’s in a position to save your life,” I tell him, and he smiles, hard and rather cold.  
  
“And you’d trust my word that I’d speak for you well enough to get the captain’s approval?” he asks curiously, managing to roll half onto his back to get a better look at me. I sit up straighter and hold his gaze. “Why, when I could just tell him to toss you overboard or  _keelhaul_  you?”  
  
I didn’t know what  _keelhaul_  meant. It was a strange, guttural word in the stranger’s strange, guttural language. But it didn’t sound like something pleasant.  
  
“I’ve known a few sailors—men like you.” The stranger snorts sarcastically. “Their word, once given sincerely, is  _everything_. If you give me your word, I would trust it to the ends of the Earth.”  
  
The stranger blinks and that hard, cold smile falters.  
  
“Sailors are notorious liars,” he says finally, quite bitterly. “And I’ve broken my word to people who’ve relied on me more than I can count without my boots off. What makes you think I’ll keep my word to  _you_?”  
  
I spread my hands again, this time in resignation. “What choice have I got? What choice have _you_  got?”  
  
“A word given under duress is not one I’d feel obliged to keep,” the stranger says miserably, pressing his damp face into Durijesh’s pillow, seeming fairly resigned himself. “Anyway, you’re only placating me. Keeping me calm till the law comes to haul me off to my death.”  
  
“I can assure you, I’m not. I want to get out of this place as much as you do, if not more. Now,” I touch his shoulder and he shudders. Muscles jump under my hand and he looks up at me hopelessly. “Do I untie you, or let Durijesh come back with the constabulary and find you here?”  
  
The stranger closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. “And all you want is safe passage on the  _Vivianna_?”  
  
“Safe passage, yes. And your word that I won’t be harmed, or forced off the ship in any way.”  
  
“Lad, it’s a ship full of hard-drinking, rough-playing  _sailing men_. I can’t promise one of them won’t think you looked at him askance and try to—to pick a fight! I can’t promise one of them won’t take it into his head to  _have_  you, whether you want him to or not!”  
  
“Your  _word_ ,  _anjaan_ , that no harm will befall me. Or we’ll both sit here till the constables come.”  
  
He opens his eyes and looks at me a little desperately. “And how far are you looking to go with us?”  
  
“As far from here as I can get.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“That’s none of your concern.”  
  
“It is if I’m bringing someone’s valued slave or a criminal aboard the ship.” That desperate gaze grows steely and I draw myself up again.  
  
“I am no slave nor am I a criminal. You have  _my_  word on that.”  
  
“Oh, have I, now? Well, that’s just jolly good, then.” The stranger chuckles raggedly, once more burying his face in Durijesh’s scarlet pillow before looking up at me again. “Fine. You have my word. My word that I’ll get you safe passage on the  _Vivianna_  for as far upriver as she’s going. That I will let no harm befall you nor will I let anyone try to throw you off the ship,” he adds off my steady gaze.  
  
“I’m willing to work while I’m aboard, to earn my keep.  _Not_  in  _that_  way,”  _I_  add when his gaze, rather lively for a bound man, sweeps consideringly over me. “I said I’m  _not_  a whore and I was telling the truth.”  
  
“Then what  _are_  you, lovely lad who works in a whorehouse and yet is not a whore?”  
  
I blush furiously. No one’s ever called me  _lovely_  before, though I’ve heard  _pretty_  till I’ve grown sick of it. “I’m a scullery boy and housekeeper. I’ve been working for Madam since I was eight.”  
  
The stranger frowns. “And how old are you, now.”  
  
“Nineteen,” I lie. Then off his disbelieving look, sigh yet again. “Almost sixteen.”  
  
“Bloody  _hell_.” The stranger chuckles again, and it’s tinged with despair. “I’ve lived to see everything—the day Bonny Jack Blythe needs rescuing by a scullery boy young enough to be his son! Oh, how the mighty have fallen!”  
  
I stand up, crossing my arms. “Do we have a deal?”  
  
The stranger’s eyes narrow once more and anxiety makes my heart race. But eventually he nods.  
  
“We have an accord, lad. And  _you_  have my freely given word,” he says again, solemnly, and I can’t help the grin that shines out at his words.  
  
“And you have mine,” I promise. “But you must do exactly as I say, when I say, in order for us to get out without attracting too much attention. Now. Hold out your hands.”  
  
I pull my knife from my waistband and his eyes widen.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt(s): Pirates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See archive warnings.

 

Getting out of the  _Exotic Lotus Palace_  without being noticed isn’t exactly hard this night.  
  
This, despite the fact that the stranger’s head and shoulders taller than anyone I’ve ever seen—tall, even, for the odd northerner I’ve occasionally met. I can feel his hulking presence behind me as I lead him toward the back hall and staircases, made no less intimidating and powerful for the fact that he’s now dressed in his linen shirt, black worsted trousers, and tall brown boots.  
  
I lead him past the fancy rooms of the working ladies and lads, to the back of the large, old brick townhouse, and the tiny, Spartan rooms of the staff—those of us who  _aren’t_  whores—pausing only to duck into my room and pack a small bundle hurriedly under the stranger’s increasingly impatient gaze.   
  
Durijesh had likely gone to the constabulary to inquire about the reward for bringing the stranger in. That had been almost half an hour ago. Who knows how long the idiot would be gone? And who knows how many lawmen he’d be bringing back with him when he returned?  
  
“Hurry,” I say to the stranger when, shouldering my bundle—several changes of clothes and the few small keepsakes I’d managed to hold on to from my life before coming to the  _Exotic Lotus Palace_ —I close the door to my room. Then I’m walking quickly, confidently toward the back stairs that lead down to the exit near the kitchens. “Look like you know where you’re going and have every right to be going there, and we should be fine.”  
  
“If you say so, lad,” he replies, sounding amused and aggrieved simultaneously. I don’t bother to look back to gauge his expression.  
  
We pass no one on the back stairs or landings—it’s a busy night, so everyone is doing  _something_. . . everyone except me, of course—and it seems to be clear sailing, so to speak, to the back exit from the ground floor landing.  
  
“Walk, don’t run, for the back exit,” I command over my shoulder, pointing across from the large rectangle of gaslight that represents the back entrance to the kitchen. Directly before it is the back door. “If someone stops us or tries to, just keep walking as if you don’t hear them.”  
  
“As young master commands,” the stranger says, sounding amused once more. I stiffen, but start walking again.  
  
We’ve just reached the rectangle of light and the door across from it when someone calls my name.  
  
My hand freezes on the doorknob—for all of two seconds. Then I’m turning it and opening the door onto the alley behind the  _Exotic Lotus Palace_. Bright afternoon light shines in, momentarily blinding me. The alley smells of garbage and piss and freedom.  
  
I’m not going to let anything or anyone stop me.  
  
“Wait—Bankim, stop!”  
  
“No,” I whisper to myself as my heart twists in my chest. I step out the door and as I do so, I hear a  _thud_  from behind me, as of a body being slammed into a wall. When I break my own edict to turn around and see what’s happening, the stranger has my friend Harun pinned to the wall and is glaring at him.  
  
Harun looks frightened and horrified.  
  
“Bankim,” he begins and the stranger presses him more firmly into the wall. I sigh and step back inside, glancing beyond the bulk of the stranger to see if anyone from the kitchen is paying us any mind. No one is, miraculously.  
  
“Harun,” I start then frown up at the stranger. “Let him go,  _anjaan_ , he’s no threat to us.”  
  
“He’s a pair of eyes and flapping lips when the last thing we want is to be seen,” the stranger hisses, still glaring at poor Harun, whose eyes tick frantically between us. The stranger has the better part of one foot on Harun—on me, as well—and at least one hundred pounds . . . all of it muscle.  
  
“You’re r-running away again, aren’t you?” Harun stutters, his eyes finally settling on me. I look away.  
  
“Yes,” I admit lowly. “It’s my only chance to be free of this place. Every time I run away, Madam has them bring me back. This time I mean to go so far she’ll  _never_  find me.”  
  
“B-but why run? We have it  _g-good_  here—honest work, f-food, and free room and b-board. And n-no one  _h-hurts_  us. . . .” Harun’s dark eyes are wide and stricken, and I look away again. I know a little of Harun’s story—snippets of the fifteen  _horrific_  years he’d borne before fetching up at Madam’s two years ago. To him, the life we currently have  _is_  a good one. But to me, someone who remembers a life of freedom, of affluence, and of love . . . the  _Exotic Lotus Palace_  is a living nightmare. One I’ve been trying to wake up from for eight years.  
  
“You wouldn’t understand, Harun,” I say, because it’s true: he wouldn’t. “I just—I need to leave and I need to do it now. Please, don’t tell anyone I’ve gone.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Keep your gob shut or I swear, by all that’s holy, I’ll cut your throat,” the stranger hisses grimly, quietly, and Harun’s already wide eyes widen further, impossibly, and he sags in the stranger’s cruel grip. Without thinking I reach out to put a hand on the stranger’s tense arm. Once more, muscles jump under my touch.  
  
“He won’t tell anyone. Right, Harun?” I’m speaking to Harun, but suddenly looking into the stranger’s stormy eyes. “He won’t tell anyone.”  
  
The stranger stares for long moments into my eyes before finally nodding once and easing his tight grip on Harun, who further sags.  
  
“I w-won’t tell, Bankim. But not because I’m afraid of h-him.” Harun’s voice firms up and when I look at him, he’s watching me mournfully, almost yearningly. My heart twists some more and I look away again. “I w-want you to be h-happy, and if leaving is wh-what makes you h-happy . . . then go with m-my blessings.”  
  
I don’t know what to say, other than: “Thank you, Harun.”  
  
“But I  _w-will_  miss you,” he adds almost defensively, glaring back at the stranger, who rolls his eyes and lets Harun go with a snort. Harun straightens his clothes and turns to me, stepping close. He reaches out and brushes his fingers down my cheek. His eyes on mine are steady and filled with tears. “I’ll miss you.”  
  
And then he darts in quick and presses a kiss to my mouth, holding it for a few seconds before leaning back, blushing so deeply it shows up even on his sun-darkened skin.  
  
“I’d better g-get back to w-work before s-someone comes l-looking,” he exhales in a rush then turns and shoulders past the once more amused-looking stranger. “Safe travels, Bankim.”  
  
“Thank you, Harun,” I say, numb with surprise and one hand flown to my tingling mouth, but he’s already lost to the noise of the kitchen and likely doesn’t hear me. I stare after him, my heart beating so fast it feels as if it’ll seize . . . or perhaps simply break. If my plan goes as it should, I will never see him again. . . .  
  
“Come, lad,” the stranger says almost gently, stepping toward the door and putting a hand on my shoulder, turning me away from the rectangle of gaslight and the kitchen, and toward the more natural afternoon light and freedom. “Let’s disappear while we still can.”  
  
Glancing behind me once—Harun is nowhere in sight, though several members of the kitchen staff are, and any of them could turn and see us at any second—I nod and follow the stranger out the back door.  
  


*

  
  
After we leave behind the Pleasure District, the stranger takes the lead in our escape.  
  
Through roundabout ways, he leads us to the docks on the Beva River, and the lively trade and work that goes on there at all hours of the day and night. Amongst the late afternoon crowds we are faceless, anonymous. I soon find myself clutching at the stranger’s hand for fear of losing him in the throngs. He bends a questioning look back at me, and I hold my head high.  
  
Finally, shrugging, he starts us moving again, hand in hand.  
  
And on we go for what seems like hours to one who’s only rarely been to the docks, such as I. There are so many sights and sounds and scents. So much to take in. And I’m all eyes, trying to absorb it. Bolts of fine fabric—silks, satins, velvets, George cloths—for exporting are being loaded onto ships. Exotic foods—meats, vegetables, spices—are being unloaded. People paler than even the stranger I find myself clinging to haggle and deal with people even darker than Harun.  
  
“Quit gawping, lad. That’s a good way to get yourself noticed and remembered,” the strangers leans in to murmur and I blush.  
  
“I’m not used to such sights,” I say helplessly staring as two men—carrying a large cage the size of a small sofa, with what looks to be a  _gigantic_  parrot inside—cross our paths, grunting with exertion. “What  _is_  that?”  
  
“It’s none of our concern, is what yon bird is,” the stranger says, pulling me along at a faster clip, squinting into the distance. “And once you’re on board the  _Vivianna_ , you’ll see stranger sights than a giant chicken.”  
  
“Sights like what?”  
  
But the stranger doesn’t answer. Merely pulls me along until at last, after another eternity of walking, we’ve stopped at a large ship near the end of the docks, where the trade and crowds have thinned considerably. The gang-plank is down and men are moving about the deck and shimmying up and down ropes and masts.  
  
The stranger pauses a few steps from the gangplank and turns to me solemnly.  
  
“This is  _her_ ,” he says, looking me over. “Your home for the next several weeks, should the captain see fit to let you stay aboard.”  
  
I nod anxiously. “And you’ll speak for me, as best as you’re able?”  
  
“Aye, that, I will. We have an accord, remember?” He smiles fleetingly before going on. “Tell me one thing first, though . . . why is it you’re so keen on leaving your home?”  
  
I open my mouth to remind him that it’s none of his business, my reasons for leaving. But then I realize . . . putting him off might be alienating a true potential ally. And what does it matter if he knows the truth? “When my mother and her twin sister were barely my age, they were both sold into bondage. To the  _Exotic Lotus Palace._  My mother’s first customer was my father . . . and upon hearing her story, he bought her and freed her, and married her. He would not do the same for my aunt, who eventually—after five years—earned enough money to buy her freedom. When she did, she changed her name to Abharana, the same as the previous Madam, and within three years, she was the new Madam of the  _Exotic Lotus Palace._  By that time, both my parents had died and I was sent to live with Madam Abharana. I’ve been there for eight years.”  
  
The stranger frowns down at me. “You’re saying . . . the Madam of that place is your  _aunt_?”  
  
I nod again and the stranger sighs. “I take it she would pitch a fit if you were to disappear so completely, you being her only family?”  
  
I snort. “She fancies that she wants to someday leave the  _Palace_  in my hands. To that end, she had me educated until I was fourteen, trained in maths and literature, so that I could hold my head high among the other . . . Pleasure District owners and managers. But when I turned fourteen, she began saying she wanted me to do as she’d had to do: work my way up as a whore, to a manager, and eventually a Madam. Or Master, I suppose. And the more I refuse her or try to run away, the worse she makes my life at the  _Palace_. I’ve gone from assisting her in the day to day operations to being a scullery boy in just over a year. I don’t know that there’s much further to demote me. I’m afraid she might decide to . . . to  _sell_  me.” I clutch my bundle to me with one hand. The other is still being held by the stranger in a surprisingly gentle grasp.   
  
“I see.” The stranger’s still frowning. “And what did your lover think of you maybe turning whore?”  
  
Confused, I look up from our clasped hands. “Lover?”  
  
The stranger nods back the way we’d come. “That scrawny boy who fancies you—the one who saw us leave.”  
  
_Harun_?!” I laugh, though it sounds false to my own ears. “Harun is  _not_  my lover!”  
  
“Though not for lack of wanting, I’ll wager.” That fleeting smile graces the stranger’s face again. “Yours is a beauty that’ll break hearts, lad, if you’re not careful and if it hasn’t, already.”  
  
“No it’s not.” I look away. At the  _Vivianna_. “And if it is, so what? It’s the face I was born with. I can’t help that.”  
  
The stranger laughs, seeming delighted. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s taken exception to being called beautiful.”  
  
I shrug. “The only value my looks have is that they remind me of my mother. When I look in a mirror, I see her face staring back at me and that comforts me.”  
  
The stranger shakes his head, still smiling, almost bemusedly, now. “You are quite the bundle of contradictions, lad. Practical yet sentimental, worldly yet naïve, mercenary yet principled . . . you’re quite intriguing, you know? In fact,” he says, turning to step onto the gangplank and taking me with him. “In fact, there might be a position for you shipboard.”  
  
“I told you,  _anjaan_ , I’m not a whore.”  
  
“I don’t mean  _that_  kind of position.” The stranger leads me up the gangplank, still holding my hand. “I was thinking more along the lines of cabin boy.”  
  
I frown as we reach the top of the gangplank. The stranger hops down onto the deck, then turns to lift me down by the waist, bundle and all, as if I weigh nothing. “What’s a cabin boy?” I ask as my feet touch the deck and I immediately feel the gentle rocking of the ship.  
  
“Well, it’s—”  
  
Suddenly a piercing whistle goes up from somewhere on the deck, and all the sailors rushing about finish up their tasks and form two neat rows on the deck, all faster than I’d have previously countenanced. Then, a burly, pale man on the right end of the front row blows his whistle again, three high, sharp notes, before calling in that northern language: “ _Captain on deck!_ ”  
  
I immediately start looking around for him, this man in whose hands my fate rests, but I see no one stepping out of what I assume to be the captain’s quarters. I look to the stranger for a cue as to what to do but he’s looking up and around him at the ship, his keen, stormy eyes taking in every mast, sail, and rope. “Good morning, gentlemen!” he barks ringingly. “Back to what you were doing! We’re weighing anchor sharpish!”  
  
The response shouted by the men present is once more in that guttural northern language I can’t follow for more than a few words, but I understand enough of it to know the response to the stranger’s shouted order is an obedient and excited: “ _Aye, Cap’n_!”  
  
I gape up at the stranger in shock as the lines of men break up and scurry about to take up the tasks that’d been interrupted by the return of their captain. The stranger—the  _Captain_ —looks down at me and smiles again, wryly.  
  
“Y-you—” I start and stutter, and his smile widens.  
  
“Yes.  _Me_ ,” he says, chuckling, and I blanch. I can feel the blood draining from my face. And draining and draining, till even the world begins to lose its color around the edges, taking on shades of grey. I begin to sway and the captain’s chuckle cuts off as he realizes something’s amiss.  
  
“Lad? Are you all to rights?” he asks, pulling me closer by my suddenly cool and clammy hand, his own free hand coming up to touch my forehead. “No fever. But you’re pale. For you.”  
  
“Please,” I say, still swaying even under his calming touch as the slight rocking of the boat seems to become a pitch and yaw that makes the world revolve nauseatingly. But I manage to meet the captain’s stormy eyes. “ _Please_  don’t make me go back to her . . . she’ll  _sell_  me,” I whisper, tears running down my face as the world goes gently dark. My last thought as I fall forward into the captain’s arms, my knees buckling, is:  _At least I may get a chance to apologize to Harun before she sells me._  
  
Then I’m just  _gone_. Lost to darkness and unknowing.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt(s): Pirates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See archive warnings.

When I awaken, moaning at the throbbing of my head, I try to sit up and only manage to get a few inches up off the pillow—pillow?—before falling back into it. The world is spinning just enough to make movement unwise, especially with the way my stomach is gurgling.

So I lay there with my eyes closed for a little while before opening them again, expecting to see my room back at the Palace. What I get is—

—richly appointed quarters like I’ve never seen before, all in dark wood, with a large desk in a corner, the one opposite to the bed in which I lay. On that desk are papers and what look like maps. Not far from that desk is a globe. In the third quadrant of the room is a medium-sized rectangular dining table with six chairs around it.

In the fourth quadrant is a large copper tub—for bathing, I could only presume—and a giant wooden footlocker. Eastern-style rugs and carpets cover the floor in a profusion of colors and shapes.

Four lanterns are lit and hanging from holders in each corner of the room, but the main source of light is the lurid sunset coming in from the window set between the desk and globe, and the dining table. By its light I can see that the bed I’m in is huge enough to sleep four—six, if they were all very close friends. It’s as soft as I remember my parents’ bed being when I was little, and I’m covered by wonderfully cool sheets and a heavy coverlet.

“Where am I?” I wonder weakly. Just then, the door to the quarters opens, letting in even more of that lurid sunset. There, outlined by the light, is the stranger.

Rather, the captain. He’s dresse much as he’d been when last I’d seen him, though his wild dark hair has been pulled back by a ribbon. He’s carrying a tray.

“You’re awake, lad,” he says warmly, entering the quarters and kicking the doors shut behind him, first with one foot, then the other. He approaches the bed and places the tray on my legs, sitting on the right edge of the bed when I steady the tray with my hands.

“Gave us all quite the scare, you know,” he says as I examine the tray: dry toast, a bowl of meaty broth that makes my recovering stomach gurgle for another reason entirely, and a goblet of wine. The only thing that my stomach likely won’t reject at this moment is the toast, so I pick up a point and nibble on it.

“Sorry. And thank you,” I add, nodding at the tray. The captain smiles kindly.

“You’re very much welcome. After all, you saved my life.”

“Perhaps,” I reply, thinking that anyone who’s won captaincy of a ship would very likely have found their way out of Durijesh’s clutches and, failing that, out of the clutches of the local law. “Are you going to send me back to the Palace?”

The captain huffs amusedly. “That’d be kind of hard to do, seein’ as we’re a good ways down the Beva, goin’ toward the Arjun Sea.” He chuckles at my gape-mouthed stare. “Aye, lad, you’ve been asleep for over a day.”

I lean back in the pillow, putting down the toast as what little strength I’d recovered leaves me.

I am . . . free. At last. Free. On my way to someplace or places beyond Madam Abharana’s reach.

“As per our deal, Bankim, I’m prepared to take you with us as far as you’d like to go in repayment of the debt I owe you. You’re free to debark at any time. Or,” the captain goes on before I can thank him again. “Or, should you prefer it, the position of cabin boy is still open to you. The ship needs one, frankly, and I can’t be bothered to kidnap one from back home. That was humor, lad. A joke,” he adds when I don’t laugh.

Still keeping a straight face despite wanting to smile just because he expects it and because I’m so giddy, I shrug. “Was it? Because I usually laugh at those. Strange.”

The captain bursts out laughing and I finally allow myself a small smile. “Oh, lad, you’ll fit in well around here. Well, indeed—no respect for authority, just like the rest of this motley crew. Good show! Say, what’s your full name?”

“Bankim. Bankim Rao.” I allow my full smile to show and the captain’s own smile widens.

“There’s that heart-breaker smile! Well, Bankim Rao.” The captain wipes his stormy eyes and I’m once more struck by how handsome he is. Like someone from a legend. Harun hadn’t been handsome—not ugly, but not handsome, either. Yet I’d liked his face just fine. Seeing it had been the high-point of my day. I had looked forward to almost nothing but for nearly two years. I’d become enamored of . . . if not him, then of the way he looked at me and made me feel.

On the heels of that, I’m also startled when the captain holds out his left hand, work-roughened and large, to me: “Welcome aboard the pirate-ship Vivianna! We’ve set sail for the South Ch’in Sea and adventure, therein! As to me, I’ll be your captain, Jack Blythe, also known as Jack, the Bonny.”

My jaw drops as Captain Jack Blythe stands up and starts for the door. “Wait a moment,anjaan—I mean, Captain Blythe!” I call, remembering my manners. Just because I’m apparently lying in the man’s bed doesn’t mean I should presume so far as to continue calling him by a nickname given him when I’d thought he was a simple sailing man.

Captain Blythe pauses and turns back to me, his face only mildly curious. In that moment my suspicion that he’d been waiting to spring that lovely little surprise—pirate-ship, indeed!—on me is confirmed. “You didn’t inform me that you were a sailor on a pirate-ship!” It’s playing into his game, but what other role have I been left with than that of shill?

The captain’s smile is sly. “That’s because I’m not a sailor on a pirate ship. I am a captain of a small fleet of them. And I’m meeting up with that fleet in the South Ch’in Sea in a fortnight’s time.” That sly smile relaxes into something lazy and assessing as he watches me. “Tell me you truly didn’t know why I had a bounty on my head? And such a large one!”

I flush, feeling embarrassed and caught out. “I—I didn’t. I wondered why Durijesh was sneaking out in the beginning of his shift. And when I went to check his room, I saw you and recognized your face from the posters at the constabulary from the last few times I’d been brought there to wait for my aunt. I run away a quite a lot,” I add when Captain Blythe’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Well. I must say, I’m certainly glad you were nosy.”

“I wasn’t nosy, I was . . . curious.”

“As I said: nosy.” The captain winks at me and I blush, glancing down at my tray. “At any rate, if the idea of being a member of a pirate-crew puts you off, I’ll be more than glad to set you to ground in Ch’in. A fine kingdom—one a smart young man like yourself would do well in,” he muses, crossing his arms over his chest. “Of course, if you decide to stay aboard, you can make a name for yourself as well as money. And you’ll have a whole fleet’s worth of brothers—and sisters—in arms to teach and train you, as opposed to being alone in a strange land, not speaking the language, and left to your own devices. . . .”

I know what the captain is trying to do . . . and it’s working. I hadn’t really thought as far as what I would do in a foreign land with no family, friends, or marketable skills. Staying in a place that I know I would be safe, could earn a living, and know at least one other soul, is tempting indeed. But. . . .

“I can’t kill, Captain Blythe,” I say quietly, firmly. Captain Blythe frowns now.

“I’m not asking you to,” he replies and I wrap my arms around myself, shivering.

“Not yet, anyway.”

“Maybe never,” Captain Blythe says, then probably off the incredulous look upon my face, and realizing how ridiculous his last statement sounded, corrects himself. “Perhaps only in self-defense, or defense of a crew-mate.”

“I don’t know that I could, even then.” I shake my head, suddenly nauseas again at the thought of making someone else bleed, even if my life hangs in the balance. I shudder. “Probably not even then.”

Captain Blythe sighs, shaking his own head regretfully. “Then I’m afraid you’re of no use to me or anyone on the Vivianna. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Bankim, and I’ll not have any weak links aboard any of my ships.”

Unaccountably hurt—most men find the inability to harm or kill when necessary to be a weakness, or so it’s been in my experience—I look Captain Blythe in the eyes and hold his gaze, so that he can see my convictions, though different, are as strong as his own. “I—I understand, captain.”

Captain Blythe nods once, still regretfully, it would seem. The once-over he gives me is frank and very admiring . . . before his face shuts almost completely, regret hidden behind acres of bravado and charm. “Very well, then, Bankim. We’ll set you down in Ch’in. Is that far enough away for you?”

I nod once and the captain smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Very well, then. Ch’in, it is.”

And with that, he turns and stalks out of his quarters, closing the doors behind him and leaving me alone to nibble on toast, slurp wine, and wonder if I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my young life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts, anyone? You know where to scroll!
> 
> Also, come hang with me on [Tumblr](beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com).


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